Me in Old San Juan (okay, not really). Photograph: Paul Owen Photograph: Paul Owen for the Guardian

So we were strolling around Old San Juan one afternoon, and the time came to give Margot a changing and a feeding. It was hot, we were tired, a bit grumpy. And we happened across a restaurant/bar on the Calle San Francisco that looked perfect. It wasn't crowded. It was open-air, and dark and cool, with a bracing breeze blowing across the main room.

There was a large table where a police officer was sitting alone. We took a small table up near the bar. But the cop left. Well, I said, let's go sit at that table. What with the stroller and all the gear, the space would come in handy. The people are the bar were incredibly nice. The cop had left his hat on the table, but I figured if he came back and saw us changing a diaper (nappy) or measuring formula out into a bottle, he'd understand and vacate, or at least share it with us.

On the table sat a cruet set, little oil and vinegar dispensers. We began to lay out Margot's various necessities. Bottle. Other bottle, of water, to pour into the baby bottle. Formula dispenser; a handy device for the road. Baby food pouch. Baby bowl and spoon. Wipes. Every so often a gust kicked up. But basically, things were humming along marvelously.

We were feeding the baby when suddenly a massive blast of wind shot through the place. The baby bottle toppled over, as did the water bottle. The pouch of baby food. But most disastrously of all - the vinegar and oil. Ka-boom, the glass against the hard wood of the table. The oil dispenser landed smash on top of the policeman's hat.

It's amazing how quickly the mind sequences ahead in such situations. I had already composed in my head the first third of my explanation to the local precinct's sergeant when I ginned up the courage to look. And this is why I say this was my "almost" Larry David moment. You know the little metal pour spouts they put on cruet bottles? For some fortuitous reason, the gods that day assigned the spout on that olive oil bottle to hit the table pointing upward. The hat got not a drop.

Imagine if it had been pointing downward. Worse still, imagine that it had been screwed on indifferently and had plopped off as it fell. That's what would have happened in a Larry David episode, right? They'd have set it up, even, with an earlier scene in which Larry was in the bar a few days before when the bartender was refilling the cruet bottles, and Larry would have said, "Uh, you're not screwing those on very tight, are you?"

But alas, I escaped any unpleasantness with the San Juan police. And any other unpleasantness besides. What can go wrong in mid-February when it's 82 degrees (interestingly, and palindromically, that's 28 Celsius)?

Actual blogging resumes tomorrow. But I will take this opportunity to say that I read the What can I do better? thread, or enough of it anyway, to reach two conclusions. First, I will write about a broader range of subjects: a little more policy, some history, political philosophy and ideas, American culture, stuff from the heartland and so forth. Second, we'll have less Sarah Palin. Notice I didn't say no Sarah Palin. But less Sarah Palin.

By the way, were you aware of the ethnographic disaster that is an English-language navigation system in a Spanish-speaking country? At one point the navvy instructed us to turn left on Calle Caribe. To you and me and any halfway intelligent English speaker, that's KAI-yay Kuh-REE-bay. The woman's voice on the Garmin said "Kal Kuh-ribe," the first syllable rhyming with "pal" and the last syllable rhyming with "jibe." And there was something weird about the way the syllables were joined together, as if out of a Twin Peaks dream sequence. This is one of those things you'd have thought they'd have figured out, don't you think?